The Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities at Princeton (IHUM) is a home for new experiments in an ancient enterprise. In collaboration with the departments, IHUM offers a joint Ph.D.; sponsors courses, often team-taught, that are open to all graduate students at the University; and hosts an annual conference, regular workshops, and interdisciplinary reading groups. Our courses and events explore the widening possibilities for humanistic study in a young millennium, reaching out to the arts and sciences and testing the conventions of intellectual exchange.

This site offers information on our programs and an accumulating archive of our experiments.

Events 2017-2018

Work The broad category of “work” commonly denotes the exertion of effort to achieve a purpose. But history and experience tell us that things don’t always work out as planned.

Nov. 8: Ben Kafka, "The Work of Interpretation" This talk considers the work of interpretation in psychoanalysis, & how it relates to interpretation in the humanities. I will reflect on the challenges of relearning how to make interpretations in a new setting, & what analytic & academic interpretation might be able to teach, or unteach, each other. (12:00pm, 301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz) [Work]

Nov. 29: Micah White, "Making Protest Work" Protest is vital form of collective work. Most, if not all, of the democratic rights that we enjoy—including democracy itself—are arguably the result of social protest. And yet it seems increasingly clear that contemporary protest is not working. So why is protest broken? And how can we make protest work? (12:00pm, 161 East Pyne) [Work]

Feb. 15: Holly Case, "Can We Work Towards a Better Future?" What happens when the political imagination fails? Can we work past a failure of imagination, or should we 'call it by its real name,' namely a confrontation with reality? Do we have to be able to imagine the shape of something in order to realize it? Is it time for a new philosophy of history? (12:00pm, 161 E. Pyne) [Work]

Apr. 4: Dana Simmons, "Repair Work" I wonder how to work in already broken worlds. Reparative scholarship offers a positive orientation, a hope to live more fully & feel better. But there is a downside. Critique can sometimes ingest & reassemble dominant modes of thinking & being. Could repair end up rebuilding what it was designed to take apart? (12:00pm, 301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz) [Work]

Events 2016 - 2017

Wave/Time/History A lunchtime talk series devoted to rethinking the concept of historical time through the figure of the wave, with speakers from legal theory, environmental studies, architectural theory, feminist and queer theory, classical reception studies, and the history of science.

Nov. 14: Charles Ray, "Experimental Statues" Starting from the philosopher Trenton Merricks’ proposition that there are no statues, only atoms behaving statuewise, Charles Ray reflects on whether he is making sculptures that behave statuewise or statues that behave sculpturewise. (4:30pm, 010 East Pyne).

Feb. 14: Miriam Leonard, "Classics and Revolution" An inquiry into the play between novelty and repetition within the temporality of revolution, using Hannah Arendt and Karl Marx to read the figure of classical antiquity within the French Revolution. (12:00pm, 161 East Pyne) [Wave/Time/History]